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Potential Twitter Buyout

Published February 12, 2011 by Guest Post / Comments Off on Potential Twitter Buyout / Posted in: Social Media

It seems that Twitter may be in early talks with potential buyers Facebook and Google, according to an article published by the Guardian.

Twitter, the micro-blogging site has approximately 175m registered users worldwide, who send 95m tweets a day. As a private company, Twitter does not reveal its financial records, but they are estimated to have revenues of $45m. This year, Twitter is expecting to double their profits and to have revenues of approximately $100-110m.

Initial talks are said to not have progressed very far but the Wall Street Journal states that a potential buyout could value the company up to $8-10bn. Both Google and Facebook are believed to have discussed bids for Twitter in the past. Founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg is believed to have unsuccessfully offered Twitter’s founders $500m in Facebook stock for the company in 2008.

Buyouts seem to be all the rage these days. Earlier this week AOL paid $315m to purchase the Huffington Post at about 10 times the media company’s 2010 revenues. Earlier this year we learnt that Groupon, the online discount coupon-a-day company, was in talks with Google for a buyout in the order of $6bn. At the last minute, Groupon declined the offer. As was speculated when we reported the story, when the deal fell through, Groupon is also planning an initial public offering. LinkedIn is also planning an IPO that could place the value of the company at the $2bn mark. Cedric Zygna, maker of the phenomenally popular Farmville online game, also aims to issue shares.